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See Torchwood: Miracle Day yet? The whole series turns on the idea of people never dying – no criminals can be penalized with death, no spontaneous abortions. No threat of physical violence can coerce people into a particular course of action, because violence and disease no longer matter. In some cases, peace is achieved; in others, unending violence takes hold. Intriguing things to consider. Of course, the plot hinges on an EVUHL CORPRAYSHUN colluding with shadow government ops to apparently engineer the whole thing in order to sell drugs and achieve world domination. Given it’s a BBC production I’m sure there is an overt statist sentiment being expressed long form; that doesn’t mean it is not thought-provoking.

That guy was a statist fuck. He proposed using people’s corpsicle relations to keep them “living productive lives” and paying their taxes. I hope Ted Williams’ head kicks his ass repeatedly when defrosting works.

According to the Department of Public Safety, the officer saw a car that matched the description of the suspect vehicle and pulled the man over at milepost 292 on eastbound I-40, just a few miles outside of Holbrook. The suspect was nabbed about five hours after the murder was reported.

Richard Luca, whose age was not given, was arrested without incident and is being held at the Navajo County jail.

In response to these disclosures, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development, and nine other senators sent a letter to federal bank regulators, asking them to disclose information gathered about banks’ foreclosure practices. “This is especially important given this week’s allegations that mortgage servicers continue to engage in widespread ‘robo-signing’ despite your assurances that the illegal actions would not continue,” said the letter,

Well, rather than applying the perfectly applicable current laws and punishing banks that continue this practice by voiding their foreclosures and liens and granting the house to the title owner, we obviously need a giant and complex solution that generates millions for lobbyists and insulates the banks.

WaPo: ‘Reckless Endangerment’ by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner …The book then gives examples where Fannie’s executives ? Jim Johnson, CEO from 1991 to 1998, is singled out more than anyone else ? used the excess profits to support government officials in a variety of ways with plenty left over for large bonuses: They got jobs for friends and relatives of elected officials, including Rep. Barney Frank, who is tagged as “a perpetual protector of Fannie,” and they set up partnership offices around the country which provided more jobs. They financed publications in which writers argued that Fannie’s role in promoting homeownership justified federal support. They commissioned work by famous economists, such as Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, which argued that Fannie was not a serious risk to the taxpayer, countering “critics who argued that both Fannie and Freddie posed significant risks to the taxpayer.” They made campaign contributions and charitable donations to co-opt groups like the community action organization ACORN, which “had been agitating for tighter regulations on Fannie Mae.” They persuaded executive branch officials ? such as then Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers ? to ask their staffs to rewrite reports critical of Fannie. In the meantime, Countrywide, the mortgage firm led by Angelo Mozilo, partnered with Fannie in originating many of the mortgages Fannie packaged (26 percent in 2004) and gave “sweetheart” loans to politicians with power to affect Fannie, such as Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. The authors write that “Countrywide and Fannie Mae were inextricably bound.”…

…The claim of a cozy connection between the New York Fed and Wall Street gets much more attention. The book singles out economists at “Timothy Geithner’s bank-friendly New York Fed” for a “see-no-bubble mentality” during the housing bubble. It claims that “the banks knew they held all the cards” when Geithner became president of the New York Fed in 2003. It says that financier Sandy Weill “cultivated Geithner” and approached him about running Citigroup, and reminds us that “even as Citigroup was building up its hidden off-balance sheet risks in 2006, its overseers at the New York Fed did nothing to rein the bank in.” …

They often publish book reviews in the weekend magazine section or even on the opinion page. The entertainment section usually gets celebrity bios not serious political books. I guess since you can’t read very well, you probably don’t read the Post and can’t be expected to know that.

Or they are political hacks who hated what the book said and wanted to bury it but the book was too important and well done to completely ignore. So they buried the review in the Entertainment Section.

Who is the “troll” here? I read the WaPo every day (for years now) and it is certainly not uncommon for their book reviews to be in the Entertainment section, especially since they got rid of their free-standing book review section.

But hey, it is so much more rational to suggest an editorial conspiracy.

As usual you are the troll. They don’t put the reviews of the big political books in the entertainment section. For example, they didn’t put the review of Rumsefeld’s book in the entertainment section.

USA Today: ATF chief: Response to gun-tracking inquiry a ‘disaster’ The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the Justice Department has been withholding key information from congressional officials and that the department sought to protect its political appointees from criticism over a failed anti-gun trafficking operation that allowed hundreds of weapons to be smuggled to Mexico.

Kenneth Melson told investigators earlier this month that among the materials in Justice’s possession was “a smoking gun” document related to the inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious that is being headed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

“My view is that the whole matter of the department’s response in this case was a disaster,” Melson told congressional investigators in a July 4 interview….

Lawyer: Cop scanner ‘crosses line’ Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour ? storing that information indefinitely where local cops, staties, feds and prosecutors could access it as they choose….

One of the boys, whose case went to trial, said he had sat on the faces of a pair of 12-year-old schoolmates with his bare buttocks in November 2008 “cause I thought it was funny and I was trying to get my friends to laugh,” he told a family court judge. But an act is considered criminal sexual contact if it is done for sexual gratification or to degrade or humiliate the victim, and punishable by lifetime registration The trial judge concluded the teenager intended to humiliate or degrade his victims and found him guilty of criminal sexual contact.

The era of rape hysteria’s invention that rape is all about power and humiliation rather than sexual gratification, becomes PC dogma, becomes the ruin of a perfectly normal boy’s life. Nice.

While I don’t think he should be payin g for this his entire life, it is pretty sick and fucked up what he did. What if he decided to urinate on a girl “cause (he) thought it was funny and (he) was trying to get (his) friends to laugh”?

Well, it apparently was a whole different deal where y’all came from but sitting on some other kid’s face – and preferably farting while you were there – was a not an uncommon boy prank in my neck of the woods. So, yeah, I meant “normal.”

“Sick and fucked up”? That’s a bit extreme. Of course it was disgusting but then, of course, that was the whole idea. Disgusting kid stunts, how do they work? There’s a bunch of adults who have made millions on a couple movies about them. Guess what, their biggest fans are millions and millions of – mostly perfectly normal – boys and young men.

Bayou La Batre police say they have found the remains of a man reported kidnapped last week. Lionel Lawson’s body was found Tuesday night. Investigators say he had been shot to death.

The alleged kidnapping happened last Tuesday. Authorities say 20-year-old Lionel Lawson met up with two men in another car sometime Tuesday afternoon. Lawson got into the car and a witness heard a gunshot before the car drove off. They have arrested Milton Harris and charged him with the crime.

Depressing article in the WSJ today about the explosion of federal laws. It is behind a pay wall. But some of the better bits

Last September, retired race-car champion Bobby Unser told a congressional hearing about his 1996 misdemeanor conviction for accidentally driving a snowmobile onto protected federal land, violating the Wilderness Act, while lost in a snowstorm. Though the judge gave him only a $75 fine, the 77-year-old racing legend got a criminal record.

Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. “The criminal doesn’t usually call the police for help,” he says.

A Justice Department spokesman cited the age of the case in declining to comment. The U.S. Attorney at the time said he didn’t remember the case.

Some of these new federal statutes don’t require prosecutors to prove criminal intent, eroding a bedrock principle in English and American law. The absence of this provision, known as mens rea, makes prosecution easier, critics argue.

A study last year by the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers analyzed scores of proposed and enacted new laws for nonviolent crimes in the 109th Congress of 2005 and 2006. It found of the 36 new crimes created, a quarter had no mens rea requirement and nearly 40% more had only a “weak” one.

Occasionally, Americans are going to prison in the U.S. for violating the laws and rules of other countries. Last year, Abner Schoenwetter finished 69 months in federal prison for conspiracy and smuggling. His conviction was related to importing the wrong kinds of lobsters and bulk packaging them in plastic, rather than separately in boxes, in violation of Honduran laws.

According to court records and interviews, Mr. Schoenwetter had been importing lobsters from Honduras since the mid-1980s. In early 1999, federal officials seized a 70,000-pound shipment after a tip that the load violated a Honduran statute setting a minimum size on lobsters that could be caught. Such a shipment, in turn, violated a U.S. law, the Lacey Act, which makes it a felony to import fish or wildlife if it breaks another country’s laws. Roughly 2% of the seized shipment was clearly undersized, and records indicated other shipments carried much higher percentages, federal officials said.

In an interview, Mr. Schoenwetter, 65 years old, said he and other buyers routinely accepted a percentage of undersized lobsters since the deliveries from the fishermen inevitably included smaller ones. He also said he didn’t believe bringing in some undersized lobsters was illegal, noting that previous shipments had routinely passed through U.S. Customs.

After conviction, Mr. Schoenwetter and three co-defendants appealed, and the Honduran government filed a brief on their behalf saying that Honduran courts had invalidated the undersized-lobster law. By a two-to-one vote, however, a federal appeals panel found the Honduran law valid at the time of the trial and upheld the convictions.

The dissenting jurist, Judge Peter Fay, wrote: “I think we would be shocked should the tables be reversed and a foreign nation simply ignored one of our court rulings.”

And how many people would read that and think, well, what’s the problem? You want to make it hard to prosecute bad guys? ‘Cause the heroic police and noble prosecutors, they only go after the bad guys.

A coalition of all 50 states’ attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and commitments to follow new rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development

With all due respect, what is “the rest of the story” on this? It seems a better story would be something like:

A coalition of all 50 states’ attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include liquidation to pay down the national debt and loss of immunity from civil lawsuits by the states.

“After the shooting, police found 20 labeled pill bottles in the home, according to a list of seized items filed in Hampton Circuit Court. The 16 other pill bottles found in the raid were labeled mostly as prescription drugs designed to treat a host of common ailments, such as diabetes, arthritis and heart disease. One of the bottles was labeled Tylenol and another was labeled as containing aspirin.

Question, if the debt ceiling debate is so good for Obama and the Dems, why does Obama want a deal to go through the election? If it is a good thing, why not keep having it every few months right up to the election?

“Texas Gov. Rick Perry is all but certain to launch a presidential campaign and is nearing an announcement set for the second half of August, according to sources familiar with his political team’s planning.”

STEVE SMITH REGRET HE HURT SOMEONE WHO TRUSTED HIM AND TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY. STEVE SMITH APOLOGIZE TO ANY HE MIGHT HAVE OFFENDED THROUGH HIS UNACCEPTABLE AND HURTFUL WORDS. BUT STEVE SMIWTH RUNNING FOR EIGHTH TERM IN 2012 AND WILL ASSRAPE ANY PUNY CHALLENGERS.

24-year-old Latoya Jordan was arrested on Thursday at a home in Fountain, Florida, near Panama City. She confessed to being involved in the stabbing death of 53-year-old Daniel Somerson of 1198 Popolee Road.

“The police officer who shot an unarmed cook last month in Olde Towne, prompting an investigation by state police and outrage in the man’s native Kazakhstan, is also under investigation for Facebook postings. One includes an image of a lynching. Another post displays a punk band’s song title: “Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?””

Prosecutors released the surveillance video Friday in the assault case against Deputy Paul Schene, who is accused of using excessive force on the girl. Schene, 31, pleaded not guilty to fourth-degree assault in Superior Court on Thursday.

“HomeContactJul 10 2011 From Gamification to Intelligence Amplification to The Singularity By Alex Peake ? “Moore’s law became obsolete as far as graphics were concerned. Moore’s law was doubling. It was accelerating so fast that NVida started calling it Moore’s law cubed.”

The following article was edited by R.U. Sirius and Alex Peake from a lecture Peake gave at the December 2010 Humanity+ Conference at the Beckman Institute in Pasadena, California. The original title was “Autocatalyzing Intelligence Symbiosis: what happens when artificial intelligence for intelligence amplification drives a 3dfx-like intelligence explosion.”

I’ve been thinking about the combination of artificial intelligence and intelligence amplification and specifically the symbiosis of these two things.

And the question that comes up is what happens when we make machines make us make them make us into them?

There are three different Moores’ Laws of accelerating returns. There are three uncanny valleys that are being crossed. There’s a sort of coming of age story for humanity and for different technologies. There are two different species involved, us and the technology, and there are a number of high stakes questions that arise.

We could be right in the middle of an autocatalytic reaction and not know it. What is an autocatalytic reaction? An autocatalytic reaction is one in which the products of the reactions are the catalysts. So, as the reaction progresses, it accelerates and increases the rate of reaction. Many autocatalytic reactions are very slow at first. One of the best known autocatalytic reactions is life. And as I said, we could be right in the middle of one of these right now, and unlike a viral curve that spreads overnight, we might not even notice this as it ramps up.

There are two specific processes that I think are auto-catalyzing right now.

The first is strong AI. Here we have a situation where we don’t have strong AI yet, but we definitely have people aiming at it. And there are two types of projects aiming toward advanced AI. One type says, “Well, we are going to have machines that learn things.” The other says, “We are going to have machines that’ll learn much more than just a few narrow things. They are going to become like us.”

And we’re all familiar with the widely prevalent method for predicting when this might be possible, which is by measuring the accelerating growth in the power of computer hardware. But we can’t graph when the software will exist to exploit this hardware’s theoretical capabilities. So some critics of the projected timeline towards the creation of human-level AI have said that the challenge arises not in the predictable rise of the hardware, but in the unpredictable solving of the software challenges.

One of the reasons that what we might broadly call the singularity project has difficulties solving some of these problems is that ? although there’s a ton of money being thrown at certain forms of AI, they’re military AIs; or they’re other types of AI that have a narrow purpose. And even if these projects claim that they’re aimed at Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), they won’t necessarily lead to the kinds of AIs that we would like or that are going to be like us. The popular image of a powerful narrow purpose AI developed for military purposes would, of course, be the T-1000, otherwise known as the Terminator.

The terminator possibility, or “unfriendly AI outcome” wherein we get an advanced military AI is not something that we look forward to. It’s basically the story of two different species that don’t get along.

Either way, we can see that AI is the next logical step.

But there’s a friendly AI hypothesis in which the AI does not kill us. It becomes us. And if we actually merge with our technology ? if we become family rather than competition ? it could lead to some really cool outcomes.

And this leads us to the second thing that I think is auto-catalyzing: strong intelligence amplification.

We are all Intelligence amplification users.

Every information technology is intelligence amplification. The internet ? and all the tools that we use to learn and grow ? they are all tools for intelligence amplification. But there’s a big difference between having Google at your fingertips to amplify your ability to answer some questions and having a complete redefinition of the way that humans brains are shaped and grow.

In the Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson posits the rise of molecular manufacturing. In that novel, we get replicators from today’s “maker bot,” so we can say “earl gray hot”? and there we have it. We’re theoretically on the way to this sort of nanotech. And it should change everything. But there’s a catch.

In one of The Star Trek movies, Jean-Luc Picard is asked, “How much does this ship cost?” And he says, “Well, we no longer use money. Instead, we work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” Before the girl can ask him how that works, the Borg attack. So the answer as to how that would look is glossed over.

Having had a chance to contemplate the implications of nanotechnology for a few decades (since the publication of The Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler), we understand that it may not lead to a Trekkie utopia. Diamond Age points out one reason why. People may not want to make Earl Grey tea and appreciate the finer things in life. They might go into spoiled brat mode and replicate Brawndo in a Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451. We could end up with a sort of wealthy Idiocracy amusing itself to death.

In Diamond Age, the human race splits into two types of people. There are your Thetes, which is an old Greek term. They’re the rowers and laborers and, in Diamond Age, they evolve into a state of total relativism and total freedom.

A lot of the things we cherish today lead to thete lifestyles and they result in us ultimately destroying ourselves. Stephenson posits an alternative: tribes. And, in Diamond Age, the most successful tribe is the neo-Victorians. The thetes resent them and call them “vickies.” The big idea there was that what really matters in a post-scarcity economic world is not your economic status (what you have) but the intelligence that goes into who you are, who you know, and who will trust you.

And so the essence of tribalism involves building a culture that has a shared striving for excellence and an infrastructure for education that other tribes not only admire but seek out. And they want to join your tribe. And that’s what makes you the most powerful tribe. That’s what gives you your status.

So, in Diamond Age, the “vickie” schools become their competitive advantage. After all, a nanotech society needs smart people who can deal with the technological issues. So how do you teach nanotechnology to eighth graders? Well, you have to radically, aggressively approach not only teaching the technology but the cohesion and the manners and values that will make the society successful.

But the problem is that this has a trap. You may get a perfect education system. And if you have a perfectly round, smooth, inescapable educational path shaping the minds of youths, you’re likely to get a kind of conformity that couldn’t invent the very technologies that made the nanotech age possible. The perfect children may grow up to all be “yes men.”

So one of the characters in Diamond Age sees his granddaughter falling into this trap and says, “Not on my watch.” So he invents something that will develop human minds as well as the nanotech age developed physical wealth. He invents “A young lady’s illustrated primer.” And the purpose of the illustrated primer is to solve the problem. On a mass scale, how do you shape each individual person to be free rather than the same?

Making physical stuff cheap and free is easy. Making a person independent and free is a bigger challenge. In Diamond Age, the tool for this is a fairy tale book.

The child is given the book and, for them, it unfolds an opportunity to decide who they’re going to be ? it’s personalized to them.

And this primer actually leads to the question ? once you have the mind open wide and you can put almost anything into there; how should you make the mind? What should you give them as content that will lead to their pursuit of true happiness and not merely ignorant contentment?

The neo-Victorians embody conformity and the Thetes embody nonconformity. But Stephenson indicates that to teach someone to be subversive in this context, you have to teach them something other than those extremes.

You have to teach them subtlety. And subtlety is a very elusive quality to teach. But it’s potentially the biggest challenge that humanity faces as we face some really dangerous choices.

During the space race, JFK said, about the space program, that to do this ? to make these technologies that don’t exist and go to the moon and so forth ? we have to be bold. But we can’t just go boldly into strong AI or boldly go into strong nanotech. We have to go subtly.

I have my own educational, personal developmental narrative in association with a technology that we’ve boldy gone for ? 3dfx.

As a teenager, my mom taught me about art and my dad taught me about how to invent stuff. And, at some point, they realized that they could only teach me half of what I needed to learn. In the changing world, I also needed a non-human mentor. So she introduced me to the Mac. She bought the SE 30 because it had a floating point unit and she was told that would be good for doing science. Because that’s what I was interested in! I nodded and smiled until I was left alone with the thing so I could get down to playing games. But science snuck in on me: I started playing SimCity and I learned about civil engineering.

The Mac introduced me to games. And when I started playing SimLife, I learned about how genes and alleles can be shaped and how you could create new life forms. And I started to want to make things in my computer.

I started out making art to make art, but I wasn’t satisfied with static pictures. So I realized that I wanted to make games and things that did stuff.

I was really into fantasy games. Fantasy games made me wish the world really was magic. You know, “I wish I could go to Hogwarts and cast magic spells.” But the reality was that you can try to cast spells, it’s just that no matter how old and impressive the book you get magic out of happens to be, spells don’t work.

What the computer taught me was that there was real muggle magic. It consisted of magic words. And the key was that to learn it, you had to open your mind to the computer and let the computer change you in its image. So I was trying to discover science and programming because my computer taught me. And once you had the computer inside of your mind, you could change the computer in your image to do what you wanted. It had its own teaching system. In a way, it was already the primer. So then I got a PowerBook. And when I took it to school, the teachers took one look at what I was doing and said, “We don’t know what to do with this kid!” So they said “you need a new mentor” and they sent me to meet Dr. Dude.

I kid you not. That wasn’t his actual name on his office and on his nameplate but that’s what he was known as.

Dr. Dude took a look at my Mac and said, “That’s really cute, but if you’re in university level science you have to meet Unix.” So I introduced myself to Unix.

Around that time, Jurassic Park came out. It blew people away with its graphics. And it had something that looked really familiar in the movie. As the girl says in the scene where she hacks the computer system, “It’s UNIX! I know this!”

I was using Unix in the university and I noticed that you could actually spot the Silicon Graphics logo in the movie. Silicon Graphics was the top dog in computer graphics at that time. But it was also a dinosaur. Here you had SGI servers that were literally bigger than a person rendering movies while I could only do the simplest graphics stuff with my little PowerBook. But Silicon Graphics was about to suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs.

At that time, there was very little real-time texture mapping, if any. Silicon Graphics machines rendered things with really weird faked shadows. They bragged that there was a Z-buffer in some of the machines. It was a special feature.

This wasn’t really a platform that could do photorealistic real-time graphics, because academics and film industry people didn’t care about that. They wanted to make movies because that was where the money was. And just as with military AI, AI that’s built for making movies doesn’t get us where we want to go.

Well, after a while we reached a wall. We hit the uncanny valley, and the characters started to look creepy instead of awesome. We started to miss the old days of real special effects. The absolute low point for these graphics was the Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull monkey chase scene.

Movie goers actually stopped wanting the movies to have better graphics. We started to miss good stories. Movie graphics had made it big, but the future was elsewhere. The future of graphics wasn’t in Silicon Graphics, it was in this tiny rodent-sized PC computer that was nothing compared to the SGI, but it had this killer app called Doom. And Doom was a perfect name for this game because it doomed the previous era of big tech graphics. And the big tech graphics people laughed at it. They’d make fun of it: “That’s not real graphics. That’s 2.5D.” But, do you know what? It was a lot cooler than any of the graphics on the SGI because it was realtime and fun.

Well, it led to Quake. And you could call it an earthquake for SGI. But it was more like an asteroid, because Quake delivered a market that was big enough to motivate people to make hardware for it. And when the hardware of the 3DFX graphic card arrived, it turned Quake’s pixelated 3D dungeons into lush smoothly lit and textured photorealistic worlds. Finally, you started to get completely 3D accelerated graphics and big iron graphics machines became obsolete overnight.

Within a few years 3dFX was more then doubling the power of graphics every year and here’s why. SGI made OpenGL. And it was their undoing, because it not only enabled prettier ways to kill people, which brought the guys to the yard. It also enabled beautiful and curvy characters like Lara Croft, which really brought the boys to the yard and also girls who were excited to finally have characters that they could identify with, even if they were kind of Barbies (which is, sadly, still prevalent in the industry). The idea of characters and really character-driven games drove graphics cards and soon the effects were amazing.

Now, instead of just 256 Megs of memory, you had 256 graphics processors. Moore’s law became obsolete as far as graphics were concerned. Moore’s law was doubling. It was accelerating so fast that NVida started calling it Moore’s law cubed. In fact, while Moore’s law was in trouble because the limits of what one processor could do, GPUs were using parallelism.

In other words, when they made the Pentium into the Pentium 2 they couldn’t actually give you two of them, with that much more performance. They could only pretend to give you two by putting it in a big fancy dress and make it slightly better. But 3DFX went from 3DFX to the VOODOO2, which had three processors on each card, which could be double into six processors.

The graphics became photorealistic. So now we’ve arrived at a plateau. Graphics are now basically perfect. The problem now is that graphics cards are bored. They’re going to keep growing but they need another task. And there is another task that parallelism is good for ? neural networks.

So right now, there are demos of totally photorealistic characters like Milo. But unfortunately, we’re right at that uncanny valley that films were at, where it’s good enough to be creepy, but not really good enough. There are games now where the characters look physically like real people, but you can tell that nobody is there. So now, Jesse Schell has come along. And he gave this important talk at Unite, the Unity developer conference. (Unity is a game engine that is going to be the key to this extraordinary future of game AI.) And in this talk, Schell points out all the things that are necessary to create the kinds of characters that can unleash a Moore’s law for artificial intelligence.

A law of accelerating returns like Moore’s Law needs three things:

Step 1 is the exploitable property: What do you keep increasing to get continued progress? With chips, the solution involved making them smaller and that kept making them faster and cheaper and more efficient. Perhaps the only reliably increasable thing about AI is the quantity of AIs and AI approaches being tested against each other at once. When you want to increase quality through competition, quantity can have a quality of its own. AI will be pivotal to making intelligence amplification games better and better. With all the game developers competing to deliver the best learning games we can get a huge number of developers in the same space sharing and competing with reusable game character AI. This will parallelize the work being done in AI, which can accelerate it in a rocket assisted fashion compared to the one at a time approach to doing isolated AI projects.

The second ingredient of accelerating returns is you have to have an insatiable demand. And that demand is in the industry of intelligence amplification. The market size of education is ten times the market size of games, and more then fifty percent of what happens in education will be online within five years.

That’s why Primer Labs is building the future of that fifty percent. It’s a big opportunity.

The final ingredient of exponential progress is the prophecy. Someone has to go and actually make the hit that demonstrates that the law of accelerating is at work, like Quake was to graphics. This is the game that we’re making.

Our game is going to invite people to use games as a school. And it’s going to implement danger in their lives. We’re going to give them the adventures and challenges every person craves to make learning fun and exciting.

And once we begin relying on AI mentors for our children and we get those mentors increasing in sophistication at an exponential rate, we’re dipping our toe into symbiosis between humans and the AI that shape them.”

Mitch Winehouse has vowed to leave no stone unturned as he tries to found out the truth behind his daughter’s tragic passing at her home in Camden, north London, on Saturday afternoon at the age of just 27.

“How did my little girl die? I won’t rest until I find out,” he reportedly told a friend.

–

He’s going to dedicate the rest of his life to finding the real killers.

Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives.

And ? not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending ? a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs.

Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix.

Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.

I think they would say “the federal government has been distorting the food market in bad ways, time for them to start distorting it in good ways.” But I did notice that he didn’t even seem to consider just quitting the current subsidies he loathes.

It is funny how he explictly acknowledges the distorting effect of government subsidy and yet also blames market failure.

Look, I’m not as hard core on the market as you guys, but even I would think that if we have been subsidizing the wrong thing and its led to bad results then why not FIRST try just ending the subsidy and seeing if things fix themselves before charging into another subsidy?

I’ve said this about global warming many times. It’s pretty recent that we’ve been hearing about AGW and it’s alleged accompanying dangers. Yet many on the left have rushed to demand drastic government action right now. Why not first see what changes with people voluntarily dealing with this information and markets supplying innovative ways people can do so? Look at what has been come up with in this very short time period: carbon-neutral beer, voluntary carbon exchanges, people buying Prius’ and stuff. Why not give this a chance for at least a little while before running into some hugely coercive program?

Given the way the Received Wisdom on what a healthy diet is keeps whipsawing around, I would venture to say that any involvement by the feds is likely to be inconsistent, counterproductive, and, yes, distorting in a bad way.

This article is getting a lot of attention and discussion. It’s interesting to me because it is imo a well stated and argued example of a strain of liberalism I reject. It’s a purely paternalistic utilitarianism, arguing the government should act to apart from people’s voluntary choices for their own good. I’m an imperfect utilitarian I guess, and this is likely why for years I’ve read Reason, because I think autonomy matters as well as welfare (though I certainly think it nutty to categorically allow the former to trump the latter).

It also shows me why I depart from libertarians in many economic regulations. I know many people who, even after being fully informed really want to eat pizza and drink sodas. I don’t know anyone who really wants to work for below the minimum wage or in an unsafe working environment, that’s something they would be pushed to agree to by unfortunate circumstances and/or the superior bargaining power of employers.

The problem is the experts are wrong more often than not. We now find out after years of preaching about the evils of salt, that there is no connection between salt and heart disease. Twenty years from now there is no guarantee what they experts think today will still be considered correct.

I think its common for a study to come out with findings that are contra or just fail to support some medical consensus, and that gets reported front page, and then that study eventually gets outweighed or contradicted itself, and that doesn’t get front page reported and therefore the idea that the “experts” are constantly radically shifting what is good and bad for you becomes more ingrained. I think its vastly overblown.

And you didn’t hear it from some authority, i.e., Scientific American? The difference between us is you read an article and suddenly bought it hook, line and sinker and I would have reserved judgment given the many articles contra I’ve read…

The difference is that I actually listen to things that don’t fit my narrative of life. Since you are too stupid or lazy to look, here you go

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine?an excellent measure of prior consumption?the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

John, you are always good for a laugh. Can you not see that “call into question” does not equal your conclusive assertion? The idea of being careful before accepting an assertion is really totally lost on you. I submit that its not the experts who are whirling around in their conclusions, it is you…

You are so tiresome. It is a meta analysis meaning it is a study of studies not just one study. And further the article explains that the evidence wasn’t strong to begin with. The study comes as close to settling the issue as such a thing can.

I know what a meta-analysis is John, I’ve done them. They are done commonly, and anyone who would reverse their view on something based on one of them is incredibly careless, this is why even your own source is careful to say that this study combined with the European one merely “calls into question” the conventional wisdom.

Someone likely has done, and likely will do in the future, another meta-analysis with the same studies and with a slightly different statistical technique find contrary conclusions. Happens all the time dude. This is why careful people wait before jumping to conclusions.

But hey, we all know Shirley Sherrod is a racist, DSK is guilty, and Muslims bombed Oslo John. Oh wait, those were all conclusions that you jumped to and later had to back down from…If you get current events this wrong this often forgive me if I doubt your assertions on matters medical and scientific…

Someone likely has done, and likely will do in the future, another meta-analysis with the same studies and with a slightly different statistical technique find contrary conclusions. Happens all the time dude. This is why careful people wait before jumping to conclusions.

Which means exactly the same as, Twenty years from now there is no guarantee what they experts think today will still be considered correct., which is what I said to begin with.

Now, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I LOVE salty food, if they find salt is not bad for you I will be the first to yell Yip-ee! and even if they find it is terrible for you I would resist any attempt to keep people from eating whatever salt they want. But to say that the experts have just decided that salt is no longer bad for you because you read a summary of two studies in a popular science journal is amazingly careless. Anyone who thinks something is settled by one or even two meta-analyses in these kinds of fields is way off base…

Here’s another, more technical look at the study. It appears far from conclusive, but the study actually found an inverse relationship between salt intake and both cardiovascular-related fatalities and development of hypertension.

However, the study used 24-hour urinary excretion of sodium as a proxy for dietary intake. I’m not sure they attempted to perform a total material balance on the subjects, which would allow investigation of the effect of sodium retention in the body versus simple intake.

I would think the subject should be thoroughly investigated, especially with regard to the hypothesis that sodium retention may mean more than just dietary intake.

When you couch your observations the way you do (“It appears far from conclusive”) you’re agreeing with me. Caution versus carelessness. If you want to fault me for taking the former and arguing with the latter, be my guest, but it looks like we are in the same camp.

MNG, while you and I may agree that one study doesn’t refute all prior work, I still find it slightly embarassing to witness the childish back-and-forth that you and John get into so frequently. Sometimes I agree with you, sometimes John, sometimes both of you miss the point completely; but by far the most frequently, your discussions devolve into no-it-isn’t-yes-it-is clown shows.

It’s like you guys are the perfect trolls for each other. If it weren’t so distracting, it would be cute.

I actually agree that John tends to bring out the worst in me, or anyone he “debates” with. Like a lot of movement conservtives weaned on the vitriol of talk radio and right wing blogs he quickly attacks when questioned at all. Look at this thread. John starts with a pretty bold assertion. Then all I reply simply:

“Citation needed about the salt not being bad for you.”

John attacks right away in his first reply:

“Google scientific American and salt you dolt. I know you heard otherwise from the authorities figures you so love and revere.”

Notice the difference with the exchange between me and Quetzalcoatl in the same thread on the exact same subject. No disrespect from either party.

So while I think there’s some false equivocation in your stance, I see your point.

I’ve been quite poor and noone I knew wanted to work for minimum wage or in an unsafe workplace in the same way that they do want other things that pols try to bar them from (i.e., soda, pizza, porn, gambling).

Most are glad the government has set a floor below which they can’t be pushed by employers with more bargaining power (we acknowledge this greater power all the time when people say “we can’t tax the rich, it is they who create jobs”).

In all seriousness MNG, haven’t we learned that no single entity has a perfect enough understanding of the market to make taxes/subsidies effective without introducing negative side effects that are on a regular basis at least as bad as the original situation?

A shopping chain (Publix) here in FL often hires “special” baggers. That’s nice and all, but they are obviously not worth $7 a hour. As it is, it’s (partly) charity that they’re getting paid. If they want to work, why shouldn’t they be hired for $4 an hour?

Honestly, I think the mentally retarded baggers are the only ones who earn the wage. I have never seen 16yos slack harder than bagging groceries. Mostly, I want them to get the fuck out of my way so I can bag them faster and more efficiently. If I was a store manager, I’d hire about 85% special for that position.

That actually bolsters my point I think, when people make that kind of choice they are defintely between a “rock and a hard place” and it’s hard for me to see that as an exemplar of free choice…

If I break down in the desert and as I crawl to the only gas station in miles and the unscrupulous owner, seeing my plight, says gas is 500 dollars a gallon, then I may prefer paying it to not buying gas and dying, but it’s hard to think that transaction was the most voluntary of exchanges…

I agree, but I think there can be times where we can soften the impact from some of those places on people with pretty minimal restrictions on liberty. Not being a libertarian I’m willing to make that trade at times, but I understand that a libertarian would not.

I don’t think that is possible, you’re not going to like my answer but it is: we have elections…

I don’t think there is a way we can both have our visions, seeing as how mine is to have a world where people are protected from those places in ways that may restrict the liberty of some and you likely hold that that is unacceptable…

The alternative is your vision of a world where people are free to take advantage of people in these places trumps mine where they are not.

We’re in the position a minarchist and an anarchist might be in. The former says “we will have a police force to defend property rights and enforce contracts” and the latter says “that’s an awful vision of the world, and you are compelling people into it!” How do they work it out?

Maybe I’ve been hardened more than I realized, because in your desert scenario, all I can think is “Thank gawd that man built his gas station where he did. $500 is a bargain next to a scenario where the station wasn’t here at all…”

Hank! You should be more principled like MNG and accept your death in the desert due to the lack of a gas station. The environmentalists will appreciate your contribution to the local vulture population.

[O]f the 278 additional calories Americans on average consumed per day between 1977 and 2001, more than 40 percent came from soda, “fruit” drinks, mixes like Kool-Aid and Crystal Light …

Crystal Light is about 5 calories per drink and Kool-Aid is the same. It’s up to the consumer of the drink to add their own sugar.

My dad always mixed it for us without sweeteners; it’s definitely an acquired taste.

But he then takes a detour into the absurd, positing that libraries should become greengrocers:

We could sell those staples cheap ? let’s say for 50 cents a pound ? and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers.”

‘Influence’ is a lot different from ‘not free’. Of course advertising seeks to influence people’s choices, but their choices are still ultimately free. General Mills doesn’t exactly put a gun to my head to make me buy Honey Nut Cheerios, but the advertising makes them look delicious.

Sure influence is lower on a continuum than coercion, but’s it’s higher than a choice totally originating in the individual. If it does’nt trip your liberty trip wire I can respect that, but I can respect that for others it does.

As I said I think he just thinks that the choices are so influenced by marketing and cultural assumptions (which are and were heavily influenced by marketing as well) are not so free and personal. As someone once told me, you can do what you want, yes, but can you want what you want? What you want is largely determined by outside things, who cares if it is government rather than a corporate ad campaign?

Ultimately I think this argument can go to far (as some have pointed out a crapload of things “influence” choice), but I don’t think it’s evil or idiotic.

Now in all three examples one could say Y is somewhat free to resist. He could just steel himself and refuse in example one, he could be wary of everyone as a potential liar in example two, and he could fight back or accept the beat down in example three. But in all three cases lets say he makes some actions indicating voluntary agreement (he hands his money over and gets something). Some would draw the line at the very beginning and say “not really free” (though likely acknowledging the latter are “less free” than the first btw), some would not draw that line until example two (I’ve never really understood how libertarians mark two with three actually). I don’t think people who disagree on where to draw that line are madly in error…

See, that is my main problem with Obamacare. All of a sudden, it becomes my business whether my neighbor eats a Big Mac. I don’t WANT it to be my business, but if he is costing me money then his choices also have consequences for me.

I do give their ad campaign respect for highlighting how divisive the product is. I don’t know how successful it will be considering they’re essentially telling potential customers, “50% of America hates this shit!”

I think Miracle Whip is pretty miraculous. In fact I dare say my sandwich just ain’t a sandwich without it…

I knew it. I’ve been imagining MNG as one of the douchewads in a recent MiracleWhip ad campaign, the series of ads with super-hip teens feeling just how Extreme a sandwich can be with the proper salad dressing applied.

I saw it opening day. Thoroughly entertaining. Not the best superhero film, but FAR from the worst. The only real flaw was that the CGI could have used some more polish (mainly in the area of simulated physics).

Good points, I too hate the forced nature of much cursing and love interest themes in most movies.

That’s what really threw me–it’s become so common now that the total lack of cursing stood out like a sore thumb. I mean there’s nothing; not even a “hell” or “damn” for spice. It’s like the whole screenplay adopted Steve Rogers wholesome persona. Honestly, cursing in the movies isn’t a big deal to me, but I do wish this approach was adopted a little more often for films other than the kiddie flicks. It’s nice not having characters talk to each other like dignified adults and not emotionally regressive high schoolers.

As for the love interest, I thought the blond corporal that hits on him was far more interesting, and she was only on screen for about 2 minutes. She’s the same woman that played Anne Boleyn in The Tudors.

More seriously, anyone seen Cap’n America? I’m dying to but waiting for the crowds to die down.

I took the family to see it on Saturday, matinee hours. Brought my two big “refill” mugs which gives you an automatic discount at the lobby candy store, and a plastic cup to share the Coke Zero with my mother in law… but I digress.

The movie is thoroughly entertaining and, for once, more character-driven than most super-hero movies. It pokes a bit of fun at the original intention for the creation of Captain America (i.e. a propaganda tool) which the hero gets tired of quickly. But once given the opportunity, he takes on the role in his own way, with gusto.

Well there was the one kid who came late to Dany and then tried to…. Shit. There’s no way to not spoiler AND make my argument. Anyhow, I maintain that there was one dance that ended worse than the white kid who tries to breakdance to be cool at the 7th grade prom and gets laughed at for the rest of his teen years.

Maria Shriver is 5’11”, and it looks like she might be wearing heeled sandals. So that kid’s 6’1″ or 6’2″, and probably about 200 flabby pounds. 5 years of training and growing would get him to an easy 6’5″ 270. Fuck, I’m jealous of that kid for his genetics now.

(Edit comment)Colesore @Ariahead My friend seemed to enjoy it, though I went for the banana condom… (I’m allergic to latex…but it was yellow…and banana-flavoured…andand *gigglesnortmaturemoment*).

I’ve always been fearful of them as well, my younger brother always had bizarre severe reactions to them, so I tend to stay clear. I don’t know why they don’t bother making good ones…you’d think it wouldn’t be hard to make a nice fruit-flavoured one or something non cough syrup-like.

I don’t think he did anything illegal. Just stupid. I mean, don’t fuck your buddy’s kids, no matter how willing and hot she is, ought to be one of the inviolable rules for those of us NOT living in a late Heinlein fantasy novel or a porn movie.

As a resident of “The South”, all I can say is that there really is no shortage of people who display the Confederate flag every chance they get. I view it as a pretty good sign there’s a moron nearby.

In the Real Clear Politics aggregate of nine different polls, at a spread of -3.4 percent he is now nearly as negative as he was right before Bin Laden was killed. He is upside-down in seven out of the nine polls, and under fifty percent approval in every single one of the nine. And six out of these nine polls are still of all American adults, which means that his true numbers among the voting electorate are even worse than this set of numbers indicates.

It’s becoming more and more obvious with every passing day that unless the economy makes a miraculous recovery in the next 12 months or so, he’s going to lose.

While there is nothing new in the just released Jim Rogers interview with the WSJ, it is always refreshing to hear him tell the truth, which is, of course that “the US has already lost its AAA status. Who cares what Moody’s says.” As for the response: “The market looks ahead: this is not the first time that the market has dealt with the fact that the US is bankrupt.” As for his proclivity to buy long term US debt: “I wouldn’t lend money to the US in US dollars for 30 years at 3%, or 4%, or 5% or you name the interest rate…. I shorted it June 10. I am short the US bond market as we speak.”

So Rogers has officially joined Bill Gross in betting against the U.S. government. Expect this list to only continue getting longer.

Fuck. I was too far ahead of this. Just sold my IEF long-term puts for a loss

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Repeat until you learn…

One of my wife’s cousins was in one of the feel good, don’t keep score, everybody gets a trophy baseball leagues for a bit. The only people that aren’t keeping score are the parents and coaches, who are deluding themselves. The kids know exactly what the score is and who won and who lost.

I actually ejoyed watching the WWC games I was able to watch. The post-tourny converage though has been annoying and has only served to undo some of my enjoyment. Instead of talking about the amazing story that was the Japanese women’s team winning the whole shebang a couple months after their country got fucked by Mother Nature (it would be like if the Yankees had some the WS in 2001), we get the “Oh, the Americans still did well!”.

Embattled Rep. David Wu will not seek reelection in 2012, but he won’t resign from office now despite allegations that the Oregon Democrat had an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a close friend last Thanksgiving.

“He isn’t going to be running for reelection,” a Wu adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told POLITICO late Sunday night. “But he hasn’t done anything that rises to the level of requiring him to resign.”

With a defiant Wu staying put, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on the Ethics Committee to investigate the explosive allegations against him.

Pelosi said she would send a letter to the Ethics Committee on Monday “asking them to formally initiate a review of this matter.”

Note that the authors give a very strong impression in the first half of the article that Wu is a Republican, by leaving out his party designation and going right to a condemnation by Pelosi (D-Calif.)

No team cheerleading, please. I’m just looking for opinions from our esteemed panel of regular commenters. Was it deliberate, or accidental?

It’s for obligations already passed by Congress, but I do wonder how many GOP members actually understand that. They seem to think it’s just raising the credit limit rather than paying what they already owe.

Obama should act unilaterally against the clear and present danger to the country that is the Republican House. Then they can impeach him and waste some more of the country’s time.

If part of Congress is too stupid or too evil not to wreck the country’s economy, the president has an obligation to do everything he can to prevent the destruction. Destroying the country for petty ideological reasons is not just one of those things legislatures do.

The thought is that the money has already been secured (debt incurred) to pay our existing obligations, but that the debt ceiling prevents it from actually being paid out. That’s obviously different than the debt ceiling raise being the act of incurring NEW debt.

This is what happens if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. It gets confusing because the press is throwing around the word “default” in a deceitful manner.

If the ceiling isn’t raised, the country does not default. Period. Default only occurs if we don’t pay the interest (not the actual debt, just the interest) on current debt obligations. Everything else is a choice.

What failing to raise the ceiling would result in (and what Tony is so afraid of) is that Congress would have to immediately run a balanced budget. That means hard choices would have to be made on what parts of the government would have to be cut. Mathematically speaking, that’s huge.

Denninger assumed a $150 million reciept intake, taking the most obvious spending targets into account:

First, there’s what we must pay. That’s $29 billion in interest. We have $121 billion left. Everything else is, legally, a choice.

Social Security ($49.2 billion, Medicare (28.6 billion) and Medicaid (21.4) billion are up next. They’re big. If we pay them all without exception we now have $21.8 billion left.

We can pay military active duty pay and IRS tax refunds (you’re going to have trouble getting people to send in taxes in the future if you simply steal them) which total $2.9 billion and $3.9 billion, respectively. We can also pay Veterans benefits ($2.9 billion.) We now have $12.1 billion.

We now have a choice. We can pay a third of the defense vendor payments, or nearly all of unemployment benefits, most of which are not insurance – they’re extended benefits. Those are $31.7 billion and $12.8 billion respectively. We cannot, however, pay both, and whichever we choose we just ran out of money.

This is why Tony, the left, and the press are now doing the same “tanks in the streets!” hysteria that Paulson and Bernanke did with TARP–trying to stir up fear to get the gravy train moving.

What’s really sad is that everyone saw this coming, and Team Blue could have done several things–passing an actual budget, raising the debt ceiling far ahead of schedule–while they had their supermajorities, and avoided all this nonsense. Obama dropped the ball bigtime on this one.

And of course, this gets to the heart of the matter, which is why Tony’s drama-queening:

Our GDP is being overstated by more than 10%, and has been for the last three years running. If we balance the budget we’ll be forced to recognize what condition our economy is truthfully in and has been since 2008 – a Depression.

The last thing the left wants is to actually come out and admit that we’re in a depression, because it means admitting that Obama hasn’t done anything to avert the trainwreck like he promised.

Sort of–basically, raising the debt ceiling would authorize Turbo Timmy to issue new T-bonds to cover the authorized spending that tax receipts won’t cover. Since Bernanke is buying up about 80% of new bonds via primary dealers, getting purchasers isn’t the problem–it’s whether Team Red actually says, “Nope, the credit card gets cut up!” which would render the Fed irrelevant.

Quite frankly, it’s a wonder they even bother with a debt ceiling anymore, but it’s coming up on an election cycle and everyone’s trying to set themselves up for 2012. So this ridiculous kabuki theater continues.

It also shows me why I depart from libertarians in many economic regulations. I know many people who, even after being fully informed really want to eat pizza and drink sodas.

And since you made a moral judgment against eating pizza and sodas, you have concluded people that eat pizza and sodas are sinners who require “convincing” on the evil of their ways, sort of like an Inquisition.

Do I have it correctly?

I don’t know anyone who really wants to work for below the minimum wage or in an unsafe working environment

I know many people who do not want to work for less than $100,000 per year and want the safest environment to work – a government office (not the USPS.)

People wish for many things.

The fact that imposed minimum wage laws limit the amount of jobs out there seems not to register with you. The fact that safety regulations are mostly rules on cosmetic features (rail height, head clearance, etc.) which are mostly useless as safety goes does not click with you. The best safety rules that most plants follow include training and awareness, something NO regulator can measure, which is why most rules have to do with measuring things, creating a bewildering list of different measures for everything from the rungs in a ladder to the color of paint to be used in handrails. Inspectors give non-compliance tickets here and there based on these silly measurements, because they cannot measure the human aspect of safety. Yet anti-market zealots like you feel that such rules really do improve the safety of workers.

that’s something they would be pushed to agree to by unfortunate circumstances and/or the superior bargaining power of employers.

Yes, those evil employers who do not want to pay more than they are willing to do. Sort of like the evil housewife who only buys tomatoes when they’re on sale – evil witch.

The fact that imposed minimum wage laws limit the amount of jobs out there seems not to register with you.

Maybe because it’s not a fact. Cough up some data, how about? We had minimum wage laws during times of full employment in this country.

Employers will always create downward pressure on wages and things like safety responsibilities. Their job is not to employ people or make people safe, it is to make profit. That’s fine, but there has to be someone looking out after the well being of humans too.

He’s absolutely right. Even in the period of highest employment in this nation’s history, there was a minimum wage. Whatever was the smallest wage that someone was paying someone to work at the time, that was the minimum wage.

Single additional dime, you mean. I think many dimes will be extracted from the wealthy no matter who prevails.

Tony, since you seem more in touch with Obama’s thinking on the question of the deficit conundrum, could you explain what he means when he talks about a “fair share”? What is the numerical metric, more or less, that you or the President would use to determine whether a wealthy person was paying a “fair” share?

The Bush tax cuts were set IN LAW to expire. So spare me your ridiculous semantic games–if you’re concerned about a budget imbalance then you have to be able to address both sides of the ledger. Anything else is agenda-driven nonsense.

Given the level of control over the government wealthy interests now have, I think it’s safe to always assume they aren’t paying their fair share.

The Bush tax cuts were set IN LAW to expire. So spare me your ridiculous semantic games–if you’re concerned about a budget imbalance then you have to be able to address both sides of the ledger. Anything else is agenda-driven nonsense.

Keep pozzing, you stupid drama queen. You’ll get taken seriously when you put down actual facts and figures like a big boy, not an idiot college student.

Belief in the myth of the Clinton surplus is an automatic disqualifer. The national debt went from 4.4 trillion to 5.6 trillion under Clinton. Clinton’s “surplus” was money pilfered from SS, and about 7 other intragovernmental trust funds.